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The best birthday present ever!

About two years ago my family gave me the best birthday present ever! This will of course be different for each person. For me it was a voucher to attend classes in the craft of mosaic making. As I wanted to learn this craft for a long time, I was very excited.

Mosaic is a very old art form, its origins lying long ago in the mists of time. It is described as the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, , an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. Small pieces, normally roughly quadratic, of stone or glass of different colors, known as tessarae, (diminutive tessellae), are used to create a pattern or picture.

So there I was, about to join countless artists, crafters, interior decorators and ordinary people in learning this art form. My purpose was to learn enough to enable me to use old tiles which I picked up when my parents moved house in my father’s storeroom to make a table top. He used to be in the building industry and had a small wooden box filled with bathroom tile samples. To me as a little girl, playing with these samples, touching them and looking at the beautiful patterns, was to be lost in a wonder world of beauty. Now I was going to use them in my mosaic project.

I started sorting different colours together and played around with the pieces until I found a pattern pleasing to my eyes. Needless to say I spent many hours working on this project and it brought back wonderful memories of a happy childhood. Now the finished project has pride of place on our veranda flanked by two old wrought iron chairs also from my childhood

Many other projects followed this first one, but none gave me as much pleasure.